MIT Sloan School of Management is not ready to have a campus anywhere in the world. Their goal is to make a difference through tie-ups like the one with Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, or through executive education, says SP Kothari, the Gordon Y Billard Professor of Management, and deputy dean of the school. Kothari was in India recently during the launch of the Mohali campus of ISB. The issue of getting the right talent keeps him awake at night, he tells ET. Edited excerpts from the interview:

What are the plans to expand in India?

Our goal is to have a meaningful presence in India. But we are not ready to open a campus, not just in India but anywhere in the world. Our goal is to make a difference through tie-ups like the one with Indian School of Business or executive education initiatives from time to time. In February, we will have an MIT finance day with Citibank. We will have the faculty come and comment on some contemporary issues. The finance day is to showcase what MIT Sloan has to offer in finance, but also use that as an opportunity to comment on some of the macro economic issues taking place. In executive education, we have a suite of courses to offer and we want to see if we can target the senior leadership of any of the companies and offer something on the lines of - a week or two in India and a week or two in Cambridge. It's best experienced at the campus rather than some faculty in some distance region.

How critical is Indian talent for MIT Sloan?

India is hugely important. To us, the student pool from India and from other quarters of the world is very significant. Indians, specially, are able to communicate, are very talented, and blend in really well. This is a significant source of high quality pool. Overall, we have 100 students of Indian origin in the management programmes where the overall number of students is a little over 750. The undergrad programmes have even more Indian students as a percentage.

B-schools have issues around paucity of quality faculty and autonomy. And even when they are looking at faculty, they don't have deep pockets. How serious is the problem in your view?

It's tough. It really starts at the top. The autonomy part is very important. You can give a lot of other things, but without autonomy, it is very difficult. All of this is like a manufacturing process where the factors of production have to be in some sensible proportion to get the desired outcome. Even in the US, we face the problem. I am the dean of faculty for MIT Sloan. My job is to get talented faculty and that is what keeps me awake at night. The challenge is much bigger in places like IIM because faculty salaries are low. And since salaries are low, the most talented students are not interested in becoming faculty. It's a vicious circle.